Posted by Ensign Elemirre Serinde (Engineering Officer) in Engineering - Container Inspection Results

Posted by Ensign Elemirre Serinde (Engineering Officer) in Engineering - Container Inspection Results
El could always tell when Lt Green came to visit when she was in the machine shop. The light from the main engineering area dimmed to a point that it was noticeable in her space. Lt Green filled the doorway quite a lot. Not content to have the materials lining the corridor on F Deck from the Vulcan containers Lt Green wanted them stored in her maintenance shop. To say it was cluttered was no small thing. She had taken great pains to organize things before even starting on the project of sorting out the stuff and seeing whether they worked. At Lt Green’s ‘suggestion’ she enlisted another engineer to help her. El had picked Rosa-Maria, plucking her off of Beta Shift to help her these past couple of weeks.

To say that it was a challenge was no small thing. Rosa had pushed her, wanting to do more. El thought she had something to prove but Rosa didn’t see that. Perhaps El was wrong, but the crewman was working to impress. El had taken the time with some ‘girl’ talk to learn some Spanish from her. It didn’t seem that difficult a language and had a certain romantic quality to it that appealed to El, but the ‘lessons’ were in between the work at hand. El sought to be methodical about the work which did not seem quick enough to Rosa, and so the push had come.

“What have you got?” Green asked. “Any luck with the Vulcan equipment? Can we use any of it without remedial Vulcan language courses?”
His tone, at least to El, had some impatience in it. True, they had kept him waiting while they checked and double checked the equipment. Without Rosa, El could have worked more efficiently and made conclusions faster, though there were clashes of methodology. “Mostly, Lt,” she answered.

Gesturing to the far wall where plasma welders sat. There were 4 of them. “Sir, only 4 of the 10 welders were salvageable. Three without much more than cleaning and some PM. The fourth needed more work and we salvaged bits from the other six to get the fourth going. Suggest that we store two in E-Deck cargo bay and retain two for use. The straps for the backpack style use needed supporting. Once back to a port we should add padding to them. What there was was crumbling leaving the metal mesh support. We’ve improvised but it needs more custom work.” She paused, took a breath and then walked Green over to a space between storage racks. On the wall were attached two obvious charging units, more elegant in appearance than their own surrounding equipment. “Of the five chargers only two were working, hence our thought to only have two units running at a time. All but one of the cells were good and we have them stored here.” Above the chargers in three neat rows were attached the cells against the bulkhead. Under these chargers and battery packs sat two of the plasma welders, hanging on hooks. The other two were separated and were squished on a rack on the far side.

Green looked at them, taking one of the cells. “They do make them look prettier,” he commented before sliding it back into its slot. “Move one of the two packs to the storage closet inside the unassigned space on B Deck so it is near in case we need one fast. The other can be in storage.” Tapping the battery packs he said, “Move four of the power cells there as well but leave the chargers here.”
“I’ll have Rosa move them,” El said.
Fingering along the strap of one he said, “Nice work on these. No, on second thought, take the spare one meant for storage and use that as a training unit. Get proficient in it then get a course set up for the rest of the engineers to use. Have Seaman Morales help you with that training. I want that set up within the week.”
“Of course, Lt,” El said.
- El, Eng

Green tapped at a smaller pack. It seemed more like a bulky side bag with a wand. “And these?”
“According to the docs with them they are hull sealant dispensers. Not too different from ours. More portable. Smaller and a bit more versatile.” She pointed to the wand. “Adjustable length and type of spray here and here. Reacts to air and solidifies in just over a second. The docs say that it can be as precise as a stylus sized hole or up to a little over a meter spray.” She seemed about to say something then paused.
“And?” he prompted.
“Well, Lt, they are okay. Compared to ours they are a breach sealant 1.2. I had expected better from the Vulcans with this.”
“They do use forcefields to seal off areas. We use emergency bulkheads. They likely just have these as back up for when their back ups fail. What are you thinking, Ensign?”
“Rosa and I were talking about this. She took the specs on this and of ours and, well, has been working on it and has come up with a kind of Franken-sealant design. Maybe for our future design models. It takes the best of what we and the Vulcans have and, I think, makes it into a 1.5. She did pretty good on that.”
“I’d like to see them,” Green said. He did sound impressed that a crewman would take that on, but then he had noticed that Rosa-Maria was very competitive in her work.
“I’ll ask her to send it along to you,” El said. “These three are the sealant capsules. There are five for each of the sprayers with one extra. I thought we’d use that one for orientation. It comes out with more of a kick than ours. I thought of having one of these every couple of decks.
“Let me know what three decks and areas you are thinking of. Remember it’s not symmetry and balance but function. What are the critical areas of the ship that would best be served by having one nearby.”
“Yes, Lt,” she said.
El, Eng

That was something to think about. There were so many ‘critical’ areas and El felt that no matter what she picked and where she would get them wrong, at least to the Lt, but she would try. Green had moved to the lower shelf farther along the wall and knelt. His knuckles rapped at one of three large crates. “And these?” He asked, looking up at her. El thought in that moment that this was the first time she had ever looked down at the Lt.
“In each of these crates,” she said, pointing to the three of them, “are a battery. They are pretty impressive. They don’t look it but they can run nearly a whole deck for a couple of hours, or a smaller section for up to 4 hours.” She paused, seeing the Lt’s eyebrows rise.
“Really,” he said, looking at them again and ran a hand over the top of them. “That would come in handy.” He maybe noted something in El’s voice and looked at her again. “What’s the catch?”
“They are one shot operation. They have no charging capability.” She continued. “We checked the components of the battery and they are not adjustable. They were built for a one shot. We can’t reverse engineer it to be multi-use. But we did take scans and have the make up of them to generate our own.” She shrugged. “They are just batteries. If we asked they might just give us an updated one to replicate.”
Green made a hmmmph sound in his throat and rose. “Unlikely, but good spirit there. Again these should be in notable areas. I’d say the bridge is one. Sickbay is another and engineering a third. If we need power those are the areas we’d need it if we got ourselves into a pickle enough to need it.” He looked around. “Any more?”
El, Eng